Sweeping Racism under the Rug of “Censorship”: The Controversy over Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging

Abstract

The Controversy over Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging CANDACE FUJIKANE wh varying historical, economic, and political pressures and locations, it is important to recognize that local Japanese and local Filipinos are racialized as distinct groups in Hawai'i.Although local Japanese have negotiated a past history of anti-Japanese racism (Okihiro 1991), they now dominate state institutions and apparatuses like the State Legislature and the Department of Education, and they author state and federal legislation and other forms of public policy. By contrast, while local Filipinos do participate in the State Legislature and in other state and administrative offices, Filipinos as a group continue to be subjected to racial discrimination and racial profiling in Hawai'i (Chang 1996). In a study of educational, economic, and occupational status from the 1990 Census data for Hawai'i, University of Hawai'i Ethnic Studies professor Jonathan Okamura concludes that "an overall ranking of groups in the ethnic/racial stratification order would have Caucasians, Chinese, and Japanese holding dominant positions," while "the lower levels of the ethnic/racial stratification order continue to be occupied by Filipinos, Hawaiians, and Samoans" (1998a:200-201).The erasure of systemic local Japanese racism in the Blu's Hanging controversy was performed through a language of rights and freedoms that attempted to foreclose a discussion of racism. Such arguments protecting "artistic freedom" assert that fiction is free from and unfettered by any connections to the material conditions of our lives, thereby rendering the realm of fiction exempt from any charges of racism. It is precisely, however, Blu's Hanging's status as fiction that allows it to perform the work of ideology. As Asian American writers and critics have shown, fictional representations of Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, and Madama Butterfly/Miss Saigon do have discriminatory effects on Asian Americans. In their critiques of the ideological and discursive nature of fiction, these writers and critics illustrate that fictional representations circulate through and beyond any attempts to cordon literature off from our everyday lives.'primarily an issue about how to protect settlers against each other and against

“We can laugh at ourselves”

“…So what and who is Local? Various scholars have focused on the cultural (Ogawa 1978(Ogawa , 1981Takaki , 1984Grant & Ogawa 1993), structural (Okamura 1980(Okamura , 1994(Okamura , 1998, and political (Trask 2000;Fujikane 2000) to examine the nature and dynamics of Local. Despite their differing emphases, a common feature among these various approaches is that each locates the emergence and development of Local in Hawai'i's labor history (preceded by the entry of European and American capital investment and the shift from mercantilism to large-scale agricultural production) and the shared experiences among the mainly Asian plantation labor force.…”

“…30 Recent depictions of Filipino male sexual violence also appear in Local literature, particularly in the works of Lois-Ann Yamanaka. For a textual analysis of Yamanaka's most controversial work, Blu's Hanging, see Fujikane (2000). 31 For nearly a decade, Hawai'i Stars aired weekly on local TV.…”

“…In the paper, I argue that Hawai'i ethnic humor is both a space for the production of "Local knowledge(s)" (Chang 1996) and Local ideologies and a site where identities are reproduced and the social order and racial hierarchy are enacted. While others have focused on the construction of Local as a non-White panethnic formation (Okamura 1994;) and as a sociopolitical identity set in opposition to Native Hawaiians (Trask 2000;Fujikane 2000), this paper draws attention to the production of Local as a non-immigrant identity. In this regard, I examine the ways in which Local comedians appropriate the voice of immigrant Filipinos through the use Mock Filipino, commonly referred to as English with a "Filipino accent."…”

“…In this paper, I situate the use of Mock Filipino in Hawai'i ethnic humor as part of the broader racializing and stigmatizing discourses of Filipinos in Hawai'i. Although media depictions often criminalize and misrepresent Filipinos as prone to violence (Quemuel 1996) as well as focus on "Filipino male sexual violence" (Fujikane 2000), in this paper I focus on discourses that highlight immigrant Filipino linguistic and cultural difference. I argue that Local comedians use Mock Filipino as a "strategy of pejoration" (Hill 1993) to construct discourses which position immigrant Filipinos as cultural and linguistic Others, signifying their outsider status and their subordinate position in the social hierarchy and order.…”

HB 645, Settler Sexuality, and the Politics of Local Asian Domesticity in Hawai‘i

“…12 Yet, the very capacity of a local identity to articulate non-indigenous belonging lends it towards 'render[ing] Hawai'i an emptied space open to settler claims of belonging'. 13 This 'neocolonial complicity' complicates efforts to create coalitions between Hawaiians and Asian settlers based on local identity. 14 Nevertheless, I suggest that 'local' is also an ongoing project whose limits for Hawaiian sovereignty remain un-worked out for the future.…”